St. Remedius Radio: “A Royal Touch of Feyshine”

Sometimes Diplomacy Is Less Fine Touches And More Punches In The Mouth

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

One of the biggest assumptions made about St. Remedius Medical College in the years since its disappearance was that it existed to enforce the peace with exonormal threats. While the College dedicated its massive resources to fight, neutralize, or deflect major threats to both space and time, St. Remedius was never a lawmaker. The school and its staff and students always deferred to legal authorities: spatial incursions fell under the revised United Nations and later the United Territories, and chronal interference incidents were under the ultimate jurisdiction of the forces of the Wolfram Tor. St. Remedius and the Zwinge Foundation both worked extensively to define and boost thaumaturgic use and potential, but lawbreaking and guild-defying mages were ultimately charged, prosecuted, and punished by the Singular Diamond, even if St. Remedius thaumaturges could assist with information and make recommendations on final sentencing. Although St. Remedius had temporary holding and binding facilities to handle various threats, it ultimately worked under a vast web of laws, ordinances, treaties, wardbonds, and rewritten natural conditions that ultimately dictated what happened to those threats in the future. This was as much to protect the school as those it may hold, as the previous college location and the surrounding crater demonstrate. The archdaemon Uri may have been in the wrong for its transgressions, but St. Remedius equally had no precedent in trying to vitrify its amulet to permanently lock it away.

An area where St. Remedius excelled was in diplomacy, though, especially between forces, groups, and individuals who otherwise had no habits, traditions, or even concepts in common. The most prominent in recent memory involved an “altercation” involving the Seid Owlriders, a feral tribe of fey normally colonizing abandoned cloud-fortresses and hunting various species of cryptid otherwise invisible to others from atop giant owls. Expansion of the northern suburbs of Dallas infringed upon treaty-protected Owlrider hunting and breeding grounds, and SUV drivers overly fond of their bright headlights rapidly found their vehicles aloft and dropped onto the tops of particular tall and strong oak trees. The Owlriders took offense, but the builders argued that they had no warning that the lands were protected, and they were able to back that city, state, and federal listings on the particular land parcels listed warnings about airspace and mineral rights, but nothing about the actual surface. The Owlriders protested, and prepared to declare war, with the Owlrider queen Dragostina Osage preparing to ride point on the first assault until satisfaction was delivered.

Most institutions facing an onslaught by anywhere between 1000 and 10,000 furious svarti riding predatory birds the size of small aircraft would, understandably, be at a loss, with the conflict rapidly escalating and the body count following suit. Thankfully, a Diplomacy grad student, S.A. Tankersley, rose to the occasion by challenging Dragostina to a duel, with the duel involving single hand combat with footwear. Dragostina had no reason to know that Tankersley was a blue belt in the obscure martial art Tai Kwon Leap, and within a minute, the svart queen was nearly unconscious with a triumphant student waving a combat boot over her head and screaming “Blood and souls for my lord Elvis!” As this was the height of careful negotiation with the Owlriders, the war fleet was dispatched back to their roosts, the queen and Tankersley exchanged the traditional Owlrider greeting of ultimate respect and appreciation, picked up the teeth each one lost with the other’s last punch, and left the negotiation grounds as lifetime friends and equals. This only became stronger when Tankersley introduced the Owlriders to fae-friendly reconstructive dentistry, but that is a story for another time.

And while you’re at it, the request lines are now open.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

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